Slim Whitman is one of the best-loved, and most widely ridiculed singers of the late twentieth century died of heart failure on June 19, 2013 at Orange Park Medical Center in Orange Park, Florida. He was 90. With his reliance on mainly sweet, romantic ballads, purveyed in a rich voice that switched easily to falsetto, he became a worldwide favourite. Nowhere has he been more popular that in the UK, where he became the first country artist to perform at the London Palladium. His concert tours, that spanned the mid-1950s through to the mid-1990s, were usually in the SRO bracket, while such albums as THE VERY BEST OF SLIM WHITMAN and RED RIVER VALLEY topped the UK charts in 1976 and 1977. His UK chart breakthrough was back in 1955 when his version of Rose Marie topped the pop singles chart for a record-breaking twelve weeks. It took thirty-six years, and Bryan Adams' 1991 hit, (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, to set a new record. Billed as Slim Whitman & His Singing Guitar, he continued to score UK hits with Indian Love Call, China Doll, Tumbling Tumbleweeds, I'm A Fool and I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen throughout the 1950s. Often songs issued as singles in the UK were only album tracks in America, where he failed to chart at all between 1955 and 1965. Though he didn't tour the UK after 1958, his albums continued to be released on a regular basis throughout the 1960s. In 1970 he returned for what was planned as a handful of low-key concerts to discover that there was still a vast audience, resulting in three-months of sold-out shows. For the next twenty years he was hardly absent from the UK and made it back to the charts in 1974 with Happy Anniversary, a song that was not even an American single. By this time, Slim had become a popular figure in the middle-of-the-road music market; Happy Anniversary is now one of the most popular songs for radio request programmes. An example of how derisory Slim Whitman's music has become is that as bad a movie 1997's Mars Attack! is, it's almost worth seeing just for the movie's revelation that Slim Whitman's music is the only deadly force on earth that the invading Martians are powerless against.



Born Otis Dewey Whitman Jr. on 20th January, 1923 in Tampa, Florida, Slim's early interest was in sport rather than music. He became a star pitcher with his Tampa high school team and hoped to make a career in baseball. However, while still in high school, he met and married fifteen-year-old Geraldine Crist, a preacher's daughter. The newlyweds moved to a 40-acre farm south of Jacksonville, Florida, where Slim worked as a meat packer. Just prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, he became a shipyard fitter in Tampa. In 1943 he enlisted in the Navy and it was then that he learned guitar and entertained at shipboard events. Upon return to civilian life he split his time between baseball and entertaining when not working in the shipyard. In 1946 he gained a contract with the Plant City Berries of the Orange Belt League, but his musical career also prospered via radio spots on Tampa WDAE and several local club bookings. It was at this point that he opted for music as a full-time occupation. He stopped playing baseball in 1947 and put together his Variety Rhythm Boys, who were sponsored by a local supermarket. He was heard by Colonel Tom Parker, then managing Eddy Arnold, who arranged for an audition with RCA Records. Beginning with I'm Casting My Lasso Towards The Sky, he released several singles that failed to make any impact. In early 1950 he became a member of Shreveport's Louisiana Hayride. It was not a highly paid gig, but it helped raise his profile. To supplement his meagre earnings he became a postman. It was at this time his trademark ‘singing guitar’ sound was developed. Slim's steel guitar player, Hoot Rains, overshot a note and Slim decided that it enhanced, rather than detracted from his overall sound.

He was signed to Imperial Records in 1951, and billed as ‘the Smilin' Star Duster,’ made his country chart debut the following year with Love Song Of the Waterfall. That was followed by the crossover success of a semi-yodelled version of Indian Love Call, that gained a gold disc for a million-plus sales. Further chart success followed with Keep It A Secret, North Wind, Secret Love, The Singin' Hills and Rose Marie. It was the latter that brought him to the UK in 1956 and led to a long European association. He became a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 1957, but at the same time, inexplicably, his US chart run came to an end. He continued to record prolifically with a series of albums that all retained a traditional country flavour with his distinctive use of steel guitar, fiddle, guitars and keyboards. He returned to the US country charts in 1965 with More Than Yesterday, and, adopting a more modern sound of strings and full vocal chorus, enjoyed further success with The Twelfth Of Never, Rainbows Are Back In Style, and Happy Street. In 1970 Imperial was absorbed into the EMI Group and Slim's recordings were released on United Artists. He celebrated with the top ten hits Guess Who and Something Beautiful in 1971.

He failed to chart any more biggies for United Artists and ceased touring the US and recording in 1975. He continued to visit the UK annually and in 1979 he filmed a television commercial to support Suffolk Marketing's release of a collection of his greatest hits. On the strength of the commercials, ALL MY BEST sold four million records, becoming the best-selling television-marketed album in history. After its success, the label released JUST FOR YOU in 1980 and THE BEST in 1982. He signed new contract with Epic/Cleveland and made a return to the country top twenty with When in 1980. He came back to prominence again with the TV-advertised BEST LOVED FAVOURITES and 20 PRECIOUS MEMORIES in the early 1990s. He continued touring the UK into 1990s, and in 2010, released the album, TWILIGHT ON THE TRAIL, his first new album since the late 1980s, though there had been a stream of compilation reissues that have continued to sell in vast quantities.

Click here to read my Slim Whitman feature first published back in 1971 in Country Music People